White Laurel
by rednightmare
Summary: "The Cousland history is long, indeed." A bloody realization of House Cousland and the end of a ruling line.
1. He Lived

_**Author's Note: **_**This was written to save my sanity from my **_**Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines**_** fic. It's set pre-**_**Dragon Age: Origins**_**, and is basically my take on the dark side of the Cousland family – with added rivalry, scandal, intrigue and general Macbethiness. (Because it's my personal mission to screw up EVERY happy thing in EVERY video game I play, apparently…) Not sure what form it will take just yet. But I hope you enjoy! **

**Do keep in mind, though, that this tale is rated 'M' and will contain content that is both graphic and… really strange. My tale portrays House Cousland as a family whose heraldry is rooted in ugliness, violent coups and blood. **

**Yes, "Adira" is indeed male Cousland. And he **_**is**_** a mama's boy. Technically a warrior, but I'm not so sure that does a good job of encompassing him…**

**Anyway. Thanks for reading!**

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**WHITE LAUREL  
**_The Last Days of House Cousland_

**He Lived**

Adira Cousland was born in a killing snow.

Eleanor labored violently through that night, midwives wiping the sweat and sable hair from her brow. They did not hold her hands or whisper kindly. They did not discreetly hide the heaps of soiled blankets stinking like war in a corner. Young doe-eyed maids all, they did not think to soothe the creases from their mistress's cheeks and assure her this torment would pass. For Lady Cousland, the world had narrowed to a searing blur of salt, hot water and cream-colored sheets. She could not see the harvest moon from where she lay buckled across a birthing bed, body bare, pores ripped open with pain. She could not see her soles digging into the fifty-pound chestnut footboard. Head spinning, this noblewoman now had only _up_; so she racked her skull back against a purple mass of buckwheat pillow and stared. The black window overhead glowed darkly, indifferent. It took no interest on her screams or lurching muscle, her writhing tangle of guts, the teeth chattering in her jaw. It did not care how loudly she wailed or how tears began to make the cushions reek of berry dye. And, because her country had no hollow comforts for its heaving Teyrna, she fought for sunrise very much alone – watching the thick white flakes drift to melt upon Ferelden mud.

Chartreuse eyes rolled into Eleanor's sockets. The wild shapes flaring behind her lids frightened Cousland's wife; she had no other option but to peel them again, drinking in the mellow tones of bedchamber. She saw skin between her sore breasts glisten over ridges of sternum. She saw her legs, shaking pale in the candlelight, dotted with red oil and death. For a clear, clear moment, the Teyrna felt her child screech deep within – from her core, through her bones – and she _knew_ that one of them would not survive.

Adira Cousland was born in the bitter northland cold; he did not slide into being like a summer's babe.

He bled her. From the first wet, harrowing kick to her womb – brief and angry, like a horse hoof – Eleanor knew one of them would kill the other, siphon the life from beating veins. The woman's nails stung in the chill, but everything else sweltered. Hoarfrost caked the glass. Her howls were like ripping silk curtains. She thought she would faint. She thought she would die. She wanted them to cut her belly open – slice shears from the naval to ribcage like a grey sturgeon – and pull this person out of her.

Adira Cousland was born at two-sixteen in the icy Highever morning. He was wan – with dark baby hair, skin a sickly carmine – and his newborn curls of fingers were cold, cold, cold.

Eleanor lived. The priestesses gathered her insides and pasted them back within her spent cadaver, witchcraft in the rime, they had torn out the heart from a warmblood colt and made a wicked tonic of it; she did not know. The Teyrna knew only that she had lived. Servants rinsed the child and brought him into her arms a week later, when she had strength enough to sit and nurse. He coughed horribly, until his toes turned blue; Mother Mallol thought it was unlikely the babe would see a year. Lady Cousland did not care. She wanted him. He was tightly-packed and tiny and breathed in great, valiant gusts. Eleanor would watch him suck on her thumb and chew with new, toothless gums. She crushed lungwort leaves and dripped them into his milk. She bundled him in green swaddling cloths and dabbed away the blood that would run from his small shapely nose.

The bed had been soaked to its frame. Bryce made a pyre of it.

Adira Cousland should have been returned to the earth, but he lived – and he grew into a beautiful, beautiful boy.

Their youngest son was ruddy and thin. His features pointed. His feet clapped the flagstone halls. Those colorless brambles upon her child's head bleached to gold and then to a flame-rich mahogany, darting around corners, roaring in the study torchlight. Scrunched eyes broadened into a briny oceanic blue – the hue of sea storms and failed romance. His legs stopped flailing; though she would not permit Adira bound madly about the courtyard with the castle's other children, fearing pneumonia or cracked ankles, calves began sticking to the backsides of lengthening shins. His hands unfurled and became elegant fingers with blunt, smarting claws. His wheezing faded into a sinewy chest. He had perfect ears with tips that rolled ever-so-slightly out from his scalp. He had perfect pink lips; the cherries and peeled oranges Eleanor fed him made the boy's mouth look like blood.

Lady Cousland loved this second child. She sat Adira in their dusted library for lessons with old Aldous, who taught him the songlike languages of Orlais and Antiva. She played her fiddle for him and drew charts of all the stars she knew. She stole the youngster away from Nan like a chicken thief, all giggles and shushed exclamations of love.

Eleanor never quite said it, but nevertheless made it very known: she did not want rough, wiry Fergus playing with him. In their heir's heavy hands and stickball matches was Bryce – his rakishness, lumbering stature and ungentleness. She loved these things about the Couslands, in a distant way… but they were not nearly as precious as a child who looked to his mother and ricocheted youth. Adira looked like _her_. The woman would clutch him to herself and smell that decades-disheveled cottage in a yellow, unimportant stretch of Ferelden moorland. She would cup his royal chin in her palm and find no trademark Cousland cleft. There were only the Boeric eyes to link them both back to Teyrn Highever. And when he closed them: nothing, nothing. They were free.

When Adira was eight, he fell ill with a wasting fever. Jaundice crept into tall and shallow cheeks; dullness glazed over those wild staring eyes. Eleanor sat endless, excruciating nights with a child who would eat only broth and quaked beneath three layers of wool. Fires would crackle at all hours in the nursery and she would sleep in that stout little bed with a hand draped before his muzzle – so the Teyrna could feel him breathe.

Adira Cousland was brought into a barren and bellicose world; he vomited scarlet to no avail, choking into crimson-flecked handkerchiefs. It was no use – the climate could not kill him. He was doomed to die by a blade.

So he lived.

Adira Cousland was a beautiful boy, a miracle boy; for many hours would Eleanor sit in the large bedroom window and comb her fingers through his soft, soft hair.

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_**AFTERTHOUGHT**_**: Well, I'm done creeping it out for one night. I'm gonna' call this a short intro-chapter a wrap. Thanks again for reading!**


	2. The Naming of Sons

_**Author's Note**_**: Big thanks to Gene Dark for the review; I hear you on the Cousland modernizations. While I do like reading different interpretations of the family (and the good people at Bioware allow for quite a few), they can get a little sitcomish here and there.**

**Oren: Fear my sword of truthiness!**

**[-cue laugh track-]**

**I also might want to mention that, though I've got quite a bit planned at this point, there's a high chance these chapters won't be sequential. Which may lead to some reorganization later, but we'll see. I'll try to keep them fairly short in the interest of readability and self-containment.**

**Thanks for reading!**

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**The Naming of Sons**

He was her little sheikh.

Eleanor, much unbeknownst to Highever's subjects – who thought their Teyrna a shackle-hearted and bloody shield-maid – was a romantic. This was not a trait she often shared about herself, nor was it the source of any pride. After all, such a levelheaded madam had no room for bards' stories to influence the course of her life; she had to remain practical, logical, and Spartan. That tinkling warmth sonnets and great tragedy churned deep between her ribs was an embarrassment akin to stomach ulcers. That Chevalier Aveline's joust and the cut in her brave white throat provoked tears was nothing to chat about over tea. And yet there remained a craven need for fantasy in Eleanor that could not be expunged. It was the main reason she had been persuaded to marry young Bryce, then a headstrong and short-haired nobleman's boy. The bann's nubile daughter had smashed dishes when Father announced their marriage arrangements had been sealed. And, after the snorting and shouting and the beating of raw fists into the earth, she had exiled herself to a stable loft and said the name a hundred times. _Cousland, Cousland, Cousland. _It rolled like milk and hot wine off the tongue. It was a beauteous sound, one fit for knight captains and old world kings. The girl would block out all talk of wedding preparations to envision herself as _Eleanor Cousland_ and decided this person, so satin and refined, was a woman she could be. No Lady with such a name could ever be truly unhappy; it was the name of one who felt only the most exquisite sorrows.

When Bryce had insisted on "Fergus" for their firstborn, a tribute to his grandfather, Eleanor made her displeasure clear. She hated it. It rang flat and clumsy, like a drooling dog – certainly not something to inscribe on statues. Oh, there was a certain tribal appeal to heritage names… even ones that more closely resembled fungus than men. But this one was simply so ungainly. _Phillip_, she had suggested, referencing a dearly-departed cousin of his. Then, in accordance with the overall tone: _Ferdinand_. _Farrell_. _Farley. Finlay. _He rejected them all.

So _Fergus_ it was.

When she'd been heavy with this second child – this thickening lump Bryce had been so convinced was a daughter – he'd proposed paying Eleanor's late sister the same respects. "How is little Eydis this morning?" he'd ask while she breakfasted, pat her above the naval, and plant a whiskery kiss on the part of Eleanor's raven hair. It was a thoughtful sentiment, honestly – a deliberate effort to cater to her wishes on Lord Cousland's behalf. And, while she appreciated the earnestness of it all, there was no connection between a stillborn sibling and this human stewing in her womb. To foster one would welcome bad omens. And so, from the start, she had not dared to bind these two beings in the privacy of her own mind.

Then he had been born a boy – a perfectly wonderful little boy – and Eydis was no longer an issue.

They had admittedly discussed the possibility of another son, albeit briefly. Eleanor had been sitting on a cushionless oak bench in Castle Highever's moth garden when the uncertainty of their child's sex dawned upon Bryce.

"Charles?" he'd pondered aloud. "What about Charles – after your uncle. Hmn. I rather like it, you know. _Charles Cousland_. Little Charley."

She had been near death when their babe was finally ripped from her, plastered in blood, his newborn skin wrinkled like olives not yet fallen from the tree. Cobwebs clustered in the corners of her eyesight. Lids slumped heavily across dimming green eyes, lashes stuck in dried salt. Exhaustion made the world began to melt into a sleepy uniform blur. And the midwife who had chopped the cord in neat halves was talking to Eleanor, asking her, wondering what they ought to call their infant lord.

She named him Adira.

When Lady Cousland was a small bony whip of girl, dirtying her braids and tearing tunics, Mother had told her a story. Mother had told her many grand stories, actually, but none that rivaled the quiet attraction of this particular tale. It followed the ill-fated harrowing of Mahé, a stubborn priestess who trekked the Silent Plains on a quest from her God, sinking in sand with nothing but wits and vehement faith. Eleanor did not know why, but she had hated Sister Mahé. The heroine's audacious estimations of her worth and stupidity in trudging through barren wastelands – unarmed, no less! – provoked this straight-faced young listener's contempt. She had just been so unbearably _right_. And Adira had been the desert Prince of south Tevinter who rode a wild-eyed black horse and shoved a scimitar into her beating heart.

It hadn't been a premeditated choice. That old fable simply thrust itself into her throat as she lay there, winded, dizzy. Once the name slipped from Eleanor's teeth and wound itself around her ears, though, nothing else would do. Bryce didn't care for it, but the Teyrna refused to call their child anything if it was not this.

She named him Adira, and he had been her little sheikh.

The brand suited him. As a child, the youngest Cousland had been sickly – yellow, waspish – thin body always skittering on the verge of death. But he would not remain a coughing babe forever. In time, Adira grew tall, petulant and voracious. He sulked constantly. He invested himself into studies with angry, disciplinarian focus. He slouched into chairs, throwing out his long legs, shoulders hiked up to those large ears. He spoke little, all in all… but lashed quite cruelly at easygoing guards or slow-walking servants, voice a threatening, well-schooled softness. Such tones were his backdoor route of commanding deference. The elves responded, too – they treated this second-born, a political infanta but their Lady's favorite, with cautious respect ever since he was little pink-cheeked _Master Cousland_. It suited him. Everything suited him. Mahé's young Adira had been a beautiful and unkind prince, after all; his handsome namesake nursed a temper that was short and implosive. It evidenced itself in that glossy magma color of the boy's mane, a sinister cherry wood; it contrasted with eyes of deep Charybdis blue.

And as Eleanor watched Adira become Adira, she also watched Fergus become Fergus. He was so large, their first – large enough that the Teyrna could not puzzle out where all this unhaltered size came from. Even as a lad, her eldest's mitts surpassed his mother's; his boots toes crunched growing feet every few months. He had a booming, hearty baritone. He got on exceptionally well with both the rough-knuckled barracks children as well as fragile young Delilah Howe. He was very charming, really – another donation from his charismatic father – and Lady Cousland had a difficult time punishing him, no matter how dismissive he behaved towards her. Once she had caught the energetic young man telling obscene wench jokes to an outfit of soldiers twice his age, and could do nothing but scowl, pinch his lobe, and try not to laugh, herself.

There were remarkably few similarities between them. Bryce's inheritor became loud, boisterous; Adira was reserved, quiet, an observer. He never matched the bear girth of his brother, just as Fergus was nowhere near as fine-looking as his. Beyond disparities in physique or hues, though, the core difference between her sons was located in their natures.

Always – always – did the Cousland heir project a beloved leader's warmth. It did not matter how grim the sky looked or how drab Caste Highever's day-to-day became; life exuded from him. This was what the staff, and the nobles, and the Howe girl, and their dearest friends liked so much about him. The boy was unshakeable. His rust eyes crinkled just so. And (when it was not snickering at some bawdy jest), that gladiator-jawed, stubbled face rested in a smile.

Fergus was happy. Adira was not.

Put plainly, the discord in their family could be summed up as thus: her eldest chuckled, free-spirited and open, while her youngest frowned with that pretty mouth stained the color of blood. One thrived while his brother wasted into obscurity; the golden lad threw shadows on the boy with his hair a dark, dark red. And hence Eleanor watched her sons age and adopt their personalities in full – she witnessed the power of a well-chosen name.

The Teyrna did everything in her considerable authority to make Adira content with his station. Silver armor, racing horses, rings, weaponry, rare books, a permanent place in his Father's hunting parties that he truly did not care for. He was a frequent reader of scholarly texts so she'd had Aldous stock shelves full of science tomes. He wrote occasionally – ink on crumpled scraps of parchment she was never permitted to see – so she had bought him a journal bound with Antivan leather. Once, when they were no bigger than ten, Lady Cousland glimpsed Adira and Dairren Loren traipsing about the grounds with theatrical scowls and practice swords; she had been so elated at the notion of her son making real gentry friends that the woman cancelled an entire summer of tutoring and sent him off to Landra's estate. (This was before that drunken humiliation at the spring salon.) Later, there were brief jaunts he took unattended to explore foreign cities. There was a month's rent at a diplomat's apartment in Val Royeaux. She had even coaxed Bryce into acquiring a mabari pup for their youngest on his otherwise apathetic twelfth birthday. Indeed, there was next to nothing Eleanor would not grant Adira, were it only within her power.

She coddled him because she adored him. But all the love in their world could not make him _significant_.

Gifts such as these soothed the burns until their novelty wore off. There soon came a time she could hide the disparity no longer, and it was miserable – for both mother and irrelevant son. Even plagued with fevers, shut indoors, he had been the typical joyous child with a squealing giggle; to see him now was heart-rending. Yet it seemed inevitable that his colic would return in adulthood, once Adira began to grasp how completely Fergus – immense, rowdy Fergus – eclipsed him.

House Cousland was a mighty house; it was built on bulwarks of bitterness and deep, murky divides.

Discord defined them. Discord derailed them.

And so it was appropriate that Lady Eleanor was not a high-born romantic. Highever was snow and dogs and mud, no dainty Orlesian province. To survive it, this woman had lived the life of a noble officer as well as a veteran swordsman; had fate and the Bannorn been more willing, she might once have been a nation's queen. But behind these bolted castle doors, she amounted to little more than a friendly wife, a fraught mother – and there was nothing to do but watch one son rule men while his brother sat waiting for purpose that would never come.

He was her precious little sheikh, but when he grew tall – when she saw the strange way that Fergus began to look at him across the dining hall; derision, misgivings, and veiled distrust – Eleanor taught Adira how to fight.


	3. Blood Brother

_**Author's Note: **_**And I'm too stressed/pressed for time to work on my **_**Bloodlines**_** story again (oh, god, it has a forward-moving **_**plot**_**!), so… here we go.**

**Thanks to Gene Dark, as well as PastaSentient! Also thanks for the favs/alerts. Actually, I'm not 100% sure how far I'll get into the post-origin plot just yet. I will dip into some parts of the later story itself as well as into **_**Awakening**_**, but won't follow it step-by-step from Ostagar on. I'd say things will be semi-canon – major events will still occur (speaking of the Howes…), but might come about in slightly different ways. Mostly because Adira is decidedly **_**not**_** a buttermilk Cousland. Damn good thing he's no mage. **

**Don't know if I'll have a whole lot of writing time over the next few weeks, but I wanted to finish this dangling chapter up before the inevitable foray into DAII. **

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**Blood Brother**

For as long as he could remember – since they were schoolboys kicking rocks against an atrium wall – Adira had been taught to want what Fergus had.

Mother had never outright told her son that Bryce Cousland prized his eldest more. Instead she showered copious praise, bought him presents, snuck the child handfuls of sugared sunflower seeds and kisses… all in an effort to compensate. At first, Adira thought he simply pleased his mother more – and maybe this was true – but eventually the lad begin to question _why_. Brother regularly skipped handwriting lessons to attend to their father; Brother met visiting dignitaries from Amaranthine and Redcliffe at Father's side; Brother attended courts in high-necked coats with eagle pins in their sleeves; Brother rode to neighboring castles in the Teyrn's entourage, even when he was a flat-footed little brute. The Teyrna, of course, did not mention these as exclusivities of being a future leader; she dismissed them. She made a gift of everything she could – musical instruments; rubies for jacks games; a polite and well-behaved squire boy from the Bannorn to play safely with (one who never shoved or wrestled or climbed fences); and, later, finely-crafted weapons.

But it was not enough. The disproportion of her love revealed more than a sire's distance. Eleanor swore constantly that he was every bit his sibling's equal before Adira learned what _inheritance_ meant; she sewed insecurities, prodded jealousies buried in his stomach. Young Cousland had very little reason to feel unloved. Mother spoiled him with outrageous openness. Servants treated their Lady's dour favorite fulsomely. And yet he wondered why Father remained so disinterested in him – why Fergus, with his off-center nose and large hands, merited the masculine attention he did not.

Adira learned quickly that whatever Fergus had was the choice cut of their kingdom, and all the pretty treasures _he_ had were rueful tokens from an apologetic woman whose husband had forgotten them both.

So it was no surprise when his brother's betrothed, seventeen and dressed in her virginal gown, was the most desirable woman Adira had ever seen.

Oriana was neither spectacularly gorgeous nor altogether unique; she was standard gentry stock, descended from some irrelevant Antivan wine lord. Her hair was plain off-blonde and bound in two conservative braids. Her eyes were dull hazel and shined vacantly beneath Castle Highever's torch-lit halls. Her frame was unremarkable, her beauty the ordinary upper-crust sort, and her dialogue flitted nervously between witty and obedient. A young bride by Ferelden standards, but a late-bloomer on the Rialto Bay. She would sit across their grand dinner spread, nestled between Bryce and Fergus, tugging at the white sleeves of her dress. Small gloved hands smoothed down her lace coif. Velvet slippers pressed tightly together on carpetless floors. When her husband-to-be (then a handbreadth shy of twenty) tried to flirt in that brazen charmer's way of his, she would flinch, smile uneasily, push steamed peas around the edge of her plate. The Teyrn would laugh cheerfully and compliment her modesty. Adira would sit with his mother at the table's opposite end, hunched over deer stew, and hate.

Adira was fifteen years old when Oriana had come to live at the Cousland estate. He spent his days prior to and after this event in unhappy languor. There were nights Eleanor wondered if her son ever left his bedchamber; there were early daybreaks she'd been jarred from sleep by the clangs of his longblade whacking into the courtyard practice mannequins. Gilmore was a lifelong vigilant squire. He often shook himself awake before dawn, strapped on a leather cuirass, and served as Cousland's ad-hoc weapons trainer/moving target. He offered respectful tips and readjusted the mistakes in Adira's footing. He allowed himself to be hit. He was only two winters their child's senior, but this seemed to create no imbalance of power between them. Indeed, she would occasionally spot the freckled knight-to-be on her way to breakfast. He'd give a courteous, civil nod – jerkin sleeves leaking stuffing where her fierce boy's rapier had lacerated them – then inform the Teyrna where his young master was. He'd behaved much the same at ten, following their little lord watchfully around the stable fence, running after his throwing disks and bringing them faithfully back. She had never seen such honesty in accepting one's station – nor this sober understanding of what duty meant at such a tender age.

Lady Cousland marveled at Ser Gilmore occasionally. Even when they were children – when other youngsters threw punches and argued over pastries or toy figurines – she believed the squire would have laid down his life for her son, unquestioningly and unreservedly. The Teyrna herself had knighted him, a simple sacrament held only days before their crests were smashed on the castle ramparts.

But that was later – for the Cousland history is long, and much of it unraveled prior to that final, sanguine hour.

Eleanor was pleased to see her unhealthy babe strengthening with age. Adira became gradually comfortable with a sword's weight in hand, learned to run beneath the chain and plates of his surcoat… it was the ugly function of combat more than the graceful forms that concerned her, but she feared for him even then. Her fears would only worsen as the Cousland sons grew. Teyrna Highever had taught her youngest how to hold his first blade and buckler when he was twelve – now she watched him knock woodchips from crude targets; lay scrapes through Gilmore's padding; meet Fergus's condescension with low, sinister, hot-blooded looks. Maker help her, there was a part of the woman terrified over what she might make of her sweet, quiet boy by giving him these warrior tools; there was a part of her that saw his towering older brother and trembled at what Bryce's thunderous heir might one day do to him had she not.

Eleanor knows Adira is not so sweet anymore. She sees him simmer and glare, scream at the servants for minor misdeeds, unleash frustrations in the military way. Splinters and bruised knuckles mar his paleness. Odd sleeping patterns darken the skin around his briny eyes. His maturing voice cracks and booms in frightening shifts, like possession. He dines at strange hours – rare, leaking venison and tomato soup and persimmons – colors that leave their stain upon those unsmiling lips. She is not sure exactly what he eats. But his mouth is always that same red – vicious, bloody red.

Adira Cousland is only a lad, but what Eleanor does not notice beyond her protectiveness and mother's love is that he terrifies. As surely and deeply as she fears for him, he curdles fear in the stomachs of the elves – and they love Fergus simply because he is not Adira. Adira: a plains infanta named for a murderer-prince, and whose beauty is made of demons and resent.

He meets them for supper every evening now, since Oriana arrived. They do not speak to one another, he and the filial thing who will soon become his sister-in-law, but there is communication. It is in gestures – a sudden lean forward, hands withdrawn from the tablecloth – subtleties, and this significant lack of speech. The clasps on Adira's jacket sleeves wink uncomfortably. Oriana stares at them. Eleanor is aging, her black hair fading silver, but she is a woman; she knows when a sidelong glance is passing, and when it is meaningful.

Oriana did not cry much when her retinue departed Highever – only a week or two, the Teyrna thought. The girl had kept her two favorite handmaidens for reassurance, lanky seaside elves with dark, long limbs, prominent noses and soft yellow curls – warm mementos of home that consoled her and wiped away tearstains with embroidered handkerchiefs. Several months lingered between now and the marriage ceremony. Time was calming; it made the eventual Chantry oaths seem distant enough to feel unreal for this brief moment. Eleanor could vividly remember the unjust, desperate hurt when her father's wagons wheels luched themselves beyond this very castle's archways so many decades ago. She could still feel how her guts curled and retched; how her throat jammed, eye sockets burning, acid rolling on the gulley of her tongue. It tasted like abandonment because it was – the organized passing of daughters. These memories elicited sympathy for weeping Oriana, surely, but coddling was not the role of a noble mother-in-law. What was she to say? _"Don't fear a life beside our boy, sweet child – he's a fine man?"_ Once upon a time, Bryce's grandmamma had whispered this same speech, a sugar drop into bitter tea. Hollow words from a doting family member. Eleanor refused to condescend in that horrid, maternal way. She gave no symbolic jewelry, offered no biased soothings. Here, Lady Cousland was stoic and hard.

She imagined this little coastal flower must shed her petals and become a moorland thistle soon enough, as well.

Eleanor picked up her fork and smashed a small brown potato into paste. She had never been terribly formal with her silverware, but feminine elegance was in less demand among these wet steppes than in high Orlais. Ferelden court mandated straight shoulders and a sturdy stomach – beyond that, their airs were sparse. It was pitiable to watch Oriana dine with them, a lamb among mabari lords, carefully slicing her steamed carrots into miniscule bites. It annoyed Teyrna Highever, to be brutally honest. Their Antivan poppet would need to learn to eat properly before she could ever learn to rule men.

If digestion was a key facet to leadership, Fergus would doubtless perform marvelously, Eleanor thought wryly to herself. Her eldest devoured his plate like Adira's pet dog. It was a trait picked up from their father, perhaps – another detail that she could never firmly place between annoyance and endearment. He would slurp and crunch without embarrassment. Bryce gulped mead and poured sloppily, laughing at any excess, foam dotting the centerpiece wreathes. It made the fine hairs bristle down her youngest's neck. His fist would clutch around a wine goblet, teeth squealing, the soles of leather boots grinding into these cobbled stone floors. Sometimes, she would reach beneath the table and seize his free hand, squeeze sharp, both their fingers painfully cold.

She loved them both – she swore she did – but Eleanor could not help it. She loved Adira more. She loved him because he needed quietly, because he did not demand it with crooked grins and ridiculous confidence, because he looked so very unlike all she had known to be Cousland. There was little warmth or joy or fraternity to be had with him. He was a child of venom and bile. His humors bled the same carmine color as his hair and gums.

When Fergus was no more than an infant in swaddling clothes, he had ripped out frayed handfuls of Eleanor's hair, smiling dully at her shrieks and muffled curses. She untangled coarse ebony strands from his baby fingers like threads of horse tail. She dabbed the drool from his cheeks while massaging her stinging scalp. For all the irritation of those smarting, clumsy tugs, the new mother adored her first child – swinging him gleefully in one curled arm, thumping his back when he'd been set upon by hiccups. Adira had been too fragile. Every time she touched her second babe had been with the utmost, trembling care. It was like looking after a dried lavender stick. He choked and coughed and labored to breathe so often that Eleanor swore _she_ had not until the boy was five years old. His life was a gift, not an accident. They could not afford to waste one minute of it.

Bryce would not reign forever. Lady Highever was prepared to one day swear her loyalties to Fergus, to pass her signet cape and laurels to his pretty, mouseish wife and become a noble mother rather than a teyrna. She was brightly, beamingly proud of his great stride and echoing, impressive laugh. She was quite certain he would shape himself into a fine figurehead without much guidance from either parent, shouldering both ample poise and friendly authority. But she could not help it. She loved her youngest more. She loved Adira more, and he loved her, loyalty powered by that same cruel dedication with which he despised his hated brother and father. Together, they were the immobilized titles. They were viciously devoted to one another. Maker help them both, they weathered the disappointment of being forgotten, bound by blood and private loathing shared … but there would be no crown for Eleanor or for her cherished favorite. Not now. Perhaps not ever.

It was why she had kept this secret – his foulest, and his most powerful.

After a full autumn and winter of his strict company, Adira was not at their dinner table tonight. Bryce did not inquire. Fergus cast his mother a questioning glimpse, head cocked, square chin jerked towards the empty seat. She had no answers. At first, Teyrna Highever assumed this sudden absence was a childish act of insolence – another unnoticed protest, expressing disapproval of the marriage scheduled for the rapidly approaching spring thaw. Strange to miss him, yes, but not completely unordinary. Perhaps he was not feeling altogether well. Though Eleanor spoke with her son often, Adira had not been visible for the past few days; quite likely he'd sunk into another bout of sulking, displeased at the boisterous fuss over their heir's wedding, over Oriana's sacrificial last weeks as a maiden. Perhaps he simply could not withstand another evening of bearish compliments, the stroking of male egos, the way his brother's ribboned prize bashfully flattened her skirts and took infinitesimal bites of baked chicken. Even now she was fidgeting, smoothing her ermine housecoat, straightening decorate buttons…

A thoughtless reach for the water glass, a loose cuff, a wrinkled glove – Eleanor spotted the bruises on Oriana's wrist with mute alarm – a series of perfect, round circles enclosed just behind her thumb. One half-second later and the sight was gone, the arm retracted. A pitcher-toting servant refilled their cups. She stared, silent, frowning – uncertain they'd been there, at all.

Then Oriana turned just so, fingers anxiously worrying her collar, and the teyrna felt her blood chill.

She saw it: a single, purple dent in the otherwise pale, unsoiled neck. A toothmark.

"Cat got your tongue, my dear?"

Eleanor dropped her spoon into the pewter bowl of corn chowder. Bryce sat happily in his tall-backed chair, enjoying hot cider, all warm yellows and celebratory reds. His hand was clasped lazily on one of Fergus's sailor shoulders. They were looking at her. They watched Lady Cousland's slackened face with messy smiles, handsome cheekbones and just the ideal level of drunkenness.

"Excuse me?"

The teyrn winked at her, a teasing sign of his fondness. "Your mouth was hanging open, love. Was it something I said?"

"Yes, was it something Father said?" Fergus chimed in, snickering gleefully, rooting one elbow onto the table and resting his stout chin against a palm heel. Candelabra light flushed his mahogany hair and tinged it a lovely shade of goldenrod. Stubble sprouted in a flimsy goatee that worked valiantly at being dapper. Honey brown eyes caught apples and reflected them from the fruit basket into sharp relief. Bold, delightful boy. So vibrant; so much like looking at her husband of twenty years past across the tower fire pits. Her heart swelled and knocked against a rib. "Or were you only trying to catch flies?"

Eleanor sucked deep the cool castle air. She fished out her silverware. She breathed.

"I was only thinking. Drifted off for a bit. Eat your supper, Fergus." A napkin swiped the handle clean before their attendant could fetch any fresh utensils.

He pouted, put out by the silence. "Oh, do tell us, Mother."

Bryce was quick to align himself: "Yes, sweet – don't leave us in suspense."

She pursed.

"Nothing that concerns either of you," the teyrna snipped, an expected retort, snideness that made her lungs ache. Then, so they would press her no longer, she shoved a spoonful of cream into her mouth and swallowed it – a harsh, vinegar pill.

They were empty nobles, mother and second son. They were statues in this court that changed unhindered around them. They loved each other – more than anything else.

And so Lady Cousland never spoke of it – not once in her remaining nine years of life.

Unsettled doubts did not take precedence over the outside world, however, no matter how sordid they might be. Highever was not a city of idle rest and hours to mull over risks or vague possibilities. Whatever pushed upon the reigning family and their subjects, it never lingered very long; there was always another brewing event or concern to displace it. Indeed, this particular spring approached quickly, and was stretched at its seams by pomp and ceremony. Fergus and Oriana took their marriage vows just three weeks later, joined amidst a mild, greening thaw; they stood on a rocky outcropping over these moors, silk rugs covering the mud, wildflowers tossed into the earthy air and her hand swallowed by his. He was striking and official. She was sheepish and contrite. Eleanor held their circlets as Mother Mallol bequeathed the Maker's blessings, spun silver, pure as ice against her skin. Roundabout nine months afterward – in the biting, Wintermarch freeze – a child was born.

She had taken the babe into her arms within moments of his birthing, Lady Cousland – cradled him to the dip in her chest and felt his heart beat strong. The handmaidens had barely wiped the blood from between her grandson's fingers and toes. Eleanor remembered with great affection how he cried and screamed for love. Such full, piercing, healthy wails. Glorious, flushed face. Chubby legs that kicked until they upset countless blankets. Fergus would puff out his cheeks and blow into the boy's naval once he healed, making him squeal a mix of fury and laughter. He was blond as infant wheat and soft and wonderful – and she had forgotten all about that sordid discovery, now so long ago. There were no doubts about his constitution; _this_ one would survive, they knew. He was willful and noisy and a marvelous pink, babbling well into dawn every night. He was an incorrigible newborn and it was an absolute joy to hear. They named him Oren, after his mother – an honor done in Antivan nobili tradition.

Adira attended the introductory rite with absolutely no expression on his face. Eleanor thought little of the way her youngest, now so staid and tall, had observed his nephew's dunking; she saw no reason for worry. To tell true, Teyrna Highever was relieved to see him standing so calmly at her side. They had never been a loving clan, the Couslands – had never been one balmy whole – but she thought that perhaps, with age and patience, their sons might learn to coexist until a younger generation donned the mantel. It would be all right, she thought, watching the grousing baby dribble holy water onto his vestments. This was a linkage, a branching point. This was a foundation for family.

Then Oren grew older – and his hair turned a dark, dark red.

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_**AFTERTHOUGHT**_**: Thanks for reading! Next chapter, "Hohaku," is Fergus-central and will show up in a bit. (Personally, I love Fergus to pieces, so I'm excited to write it.) Granted, it's exam season where I am, but I'll try my best not to let **_**White Laurel**_** go quite so long without an update.**


	4. Hohaku

_**Author's Note: **_**Thanks to those who reviewed, and to those who faved/alerted!**

**This chapter stars Fergus. Very short – sorry for that! – mostly a bridge between setup and the actual action kick-off. My **_**Dragon Age**_** muse has latched firmly onto making sense of Anders lately, but I still do like to dabble around with other characters.**

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**Hohaku**

Hohaku was a prideful dog.

Choice guard of king stock, the hound did not buckle and whimper for anyone. He did not lick palms for salt or handouts, rolling catlike upon his back for belly pats. He did not scurry into Chief-Wife's skirts whenever brush wolves howled in the Chasind dark. He did not whine or scavenge meat from dry calf bones; he did not settle, letting fat thicken his flanks; his tooth and muscle was built for barbarian thrones.

Hohaku was the first pup in a litter of many; his brothers were born feeble and languid, as though he had eaten away their flesh in the womb.

Many siblings, had the mighty mountain courser. Small, whimpering, suckling kits – they pushed at Hohaku's feet and gnawed at his ankles, inciting attention of the violent sort. But Chief's Dog was not a villainous brute. He demanded his dues – the honor of titles that were fairly and justly given – though a champion's pride did not always translate to bloodlust. In this, he was generous. In this, he could be tolerant, secure in the knowledge of heirship and the comforts of status promised. The great hound did not punish envy, nor jealousy, nor those sharp and resentful eyes of flimsier beasts. He did not harass the baleful Second Pup – pretty and neglected, teething puppy of Chief-Wife – even as distrust prickled fine hairs down both their spines. He did not hate lesser creatures for being lesser.

Hohaku never hurt his small brother – did not nip at his throat or tear fur from this runt's red hide. It was important to recognize that the fierce mabari lord did not begin a tyrant, for no animal or Bannorn boy truly does. Unprovoked, there are no ripped pelts. Unprovoked, there are no barrows full of young, squandered bodies, clover blankets sprouting from princely blood run cold. There is nothing to fear from a hound left unprovoked. It is threat that corrupts – power, praise and the danger of losing both – that twists good dogs into vengeful men. Nan told the story well, and always made sure to mention this.

Three Cousland masters the gnarled old cook has served – a fishwife in their kitchen, a fly on the noble wall. The cycles of birthright are as familiar to her as flour and egg white to old, knotted hands. She knows nothing if it is not this.

What Nan forgot to mention, however, was that this second dog – this weaker, less-worthy brother – possessed one thing his strong, dominant elder did not: patience.

Strength cripples. Patience kills.

Hohaku was a prideful dog. He was not stupid.

On some mornings, Fergus watches his son play in the castle curtilage – loping, hale, armed with stick and leather racket. He would toss catching balls high into the air, then whips his makeshift bat so hard its stitchings pop. Oren loves to break things. He delights in his childhood force; how the sound of wood against lambskin echoes loudly, starting servants; the arc of a hammered target; the satisfaction of snapping branches. He is pleased by the splinters that stick in his palms, and the stoic face he masters when Oriana plucks them out. There is a boy's pride in the way his mother frets over hurting him, because even now, he knows that she cannot. Bryce's grandson is a healthy colt. This swells Lord Highever's soul – the laughter of his child's child bouncing off stone corridors, carrying through thin moorland air, a sign of family futures ensured. The Teyrn dotes upon their legacy, showering gifts and games; Oren's energy and heart belong to his grandpapa.

Today, Fergus looks on as Father – full of new life beneath the grey – instructs his son on the finer points of bocce. They shout at each other across the playing field, congratulations and happy accusations of _"Cheating! You're cheating! Couslands do not cheat!"_. Shoes crunch dry, yellow grass, and the world smells of cedar and foundry smoke. All is clear this morning. Guardsman patrol the ramparts. Oriana embroiders nervously by herself on a bench beside the chapel's modest flower garden. Mother is beside him, sitting close, the train of her day dress soaking up dirt. He can hear the clockwork _whack! whack! whack!_ of Adira's sword hitting a mannequin from the barracks courtyard.

"He's going to throw out his back," Eleanor worries, sparse brows slanting towards her sharp, Fereldan nose. Harvestmere wind ripples the field. "Honestly, show some restraint! Nigh fifty years and he still insists on romping about like some adolescent. I don't know how we're going to carry him up to a bed."

Fergus's large hands rub together. Broad haunches dip around ears that will one day hear council in Landsmeet halls. He feels warmth bubble from deep within – a brew of affection and sickness that Highever's heir cannot put to words.

Mother places one hand upon his knee and points as her husband suddenly swoops for her grandchild's waist. "_Bryce_!" she shrieks to them, a shrill and matronly order. He is swinging the boy as though to toss him over one shoulder. "Bryce, don't you dare! Put him down! You're going to hurt yourself! Oren, don't let your grandpapa hurt himself!"

"He was cheating!" Father hollers back, chuckling, breathless with the effort of pinning down eight-year-old arms. "About time someone teaches this little snip what Cousland men do to players who _cheat_!"

"I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't!" Oren squeals, and wrestles himself away.

Fergus presses palm heels into his brow and breathes out. He transposes himself into the scene, merriment so familiar, and prays to let that be enough. This dominion has no place for paranoid lords. Families do not stand firm for twitching, obsessive patriarchs.

And yet that _boiling_ in the man's stomach will not subside. Oren's loping and protests and boisterous glee are all his, he knows, clutching close to the paternal affection they stir. The lad appreciates parents who spoil him; when he smiles, dimpled and confident, it is like pouring over a mirror. That should be enough, should it not? Loving one's child? There is no romance from an arranged marriage, for Oriana is frosty and quiet – but Maker, believe, Fergus Cousland loves his boy. He is everything a sire could want of an inheritor. He is vigorous, well-behaved, innately curious and respectful to those who raise him. He is a wonderful son.

And yet Fergus watches Oren, and he cannot see past the dark red hair.

"What color! He must get it from your own grandpapa," Mother comments, a pleasant observation, but one observed too often to be anything but desperate reassurance. Her efforts are diamonds – in intent and clarity. They sparkle to distract from the ugliness of life. "And I'm glad something of my bloodline sticks, at least! Come. Look at that chin. His elbows. And those wide, square shoulders. Very stately. Very Cousland. You were just like that at his age, you know. The spitting image. Thanks be to your old father's wrinkles; were it not for them, I'd swear I'd dipped into the Fade and wandered out two decades ago!"

In the training square, Adira breaks another stuffed soldier, chipping at the frames until they crack and timber.

Fergus has seen Oriana and his brother share space, be it in dinner halls or library nooks when Oren is at Aldous's lessons – has seen silent avoidance, shun that feels unnatural. There is disquiet in this rift. He does not think they have ever mentioned one another… indeed, cannot recall Adira ever once speaking her name. But his wife is shy and his sibling unfriendly, so the young successor never found this altogether strange. Until now. Now, he wishes fervently to find that time where coincidences and bizarre manners did not plague him with night-sweats, hate-spells, suspicion and private despair. He wishes faithfulness upon his bride. He wishes "good day, Uncle" didn't pass their child's lips, three innocuous words, to send a chill down his father' spine bitter and foul enough to split the man's heart.

He could have another son. He would never stop loving Oren, who was so much like him in body and mind, but he could have another son. Yet he could never change their birthright. A first child was definitive; a first child was born to lead men. And this was not something the future Teyrn could ever bring himself to say aloud.

In their family yard, Oren volos the ball too high, and Fergus loses it in the cloud-botted sun.

There is nothing to fear from a hound left unprovoked. A hound unprovoked is a lenient, enduring brother.

And Nan – sure as she baked his daily lunches and rationed sweet pies – had drilled that wisdom into her mistress's infanta son, a boy both scorned and intelligent. She had told the story of proud Hohaku and his small littermate – a second-born to whom honor came not from titles, but for calmness, obedience, loyalty. With bedtime tales, she taught the wisdom that a schoolmaster's books could not. It was the finest thing a woman of her meager station could offer a lord's child.

But Adira was not content with honor. Adira, Fergus Cousland's Second Dog, demanded justice for a mother and son forgot. Hohaku and Chief would both pay for boor-headed, self-loving short-sight; he need only plan their position and bide his time. This Second Dog was ambition stalled.

Though he might have been young – though he might have been small, daintier-nosed, narrower through the chest – though he might have been not so much a hound as a lap pet, with every bite bitten-back, his teeth grew sharp as a lawman's axe.

"Pup," Bryce called across the terrace – though his pup is a man of twenty-four years now, jaw set, body strapped in a soldier's plate. "Take these rackets back into the shed, will you? You nephew wants to go peruse the stables. I should be back in a few hours to receive our evening guests, so keep the entryway clean. And… clean up yourself, all right? You're supposed to stand by your mother in the visiting chamber this evening – not loiter around out here, smacking the soldiers' dummies. Do it quickly. Thank you, pup."

Teyrn Highever's step was brisk and unaffected as turned to walk away, gesturing to Fergus, leading Oren by his sleeve.

The sword hummed in Adira's patient hand.

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_**AFTERTHOUGHT**_**: Next chapter is the beginning of the end, and the appearance of familiar origin plot themes. Thank you for reading!**


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